Термен не мрет: A fractional biography
of failure

Booth, Charles

Abstract

Peter Hitchcock has described the subject of this paper as ‘the story of the twentieth
century’. Lev Termen (commonly anglicized as Leon Theremin) was a musician,
inventor, entrepreneur and espionage agent who developed the Theremin, an early
electronic musical instrument that is played without physical contact by the musician,
and the first radio-controlled electronic bugging device, among many other electronic
instruments and technologies. Despite this inventive fecundity, however, none of his
inventions were marketed successfully, at least in a conventional sense. This paper is an unconventional dual biography of Termen and the Theremin, in which I juxtapose a linear, inventor-centred account of the technologies, exemplified by my sources,with a narrative focusing on some of their multiple meanings, uses and developments;and on the multiple, fractional, yet connected identities of their inventor. The paper concludes with a discussion of the substantive and methodological implications of this‘fractional biography of failure’, drawing on some aspects of the work of Walter Benjamin.

Citation

of failure. Management and Organizational History, 8(1), 23-42

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Feb 19, 2013
• Journal: Management & Organizational History
• Print ISSN: 1744-9359
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis (Routledge)
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 8
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 23-42
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/934764
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17449359.2013.750047